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Month: March 2009

I’ve heard about this a while ago, but now it’s statistically proven. Shooting Games can increase/help a players vision. It has to do with Contrast Sensitivity, apparently shooting games (Like Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3) increase and exercise your Contrast Sensitivity. What is contrast sensitivity? It is your ability to notice tiny changes in shades of grey against a uniform background. Which is a skill used for driving in the night and reading (And your over all ability when seeing in the dark).

”This is not a skill that people were supposed to get better at by training,” said Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York state and the study’s lead researcher. ”It was something that we corrected for at the level of the optics of the eye – to get better contrast detection you get glasses or laser surgery.”

Not only that, but the effects are long lasting. ”The positive effect remained months, even years after training, indicating long-lasting gains,” she said.

They considered that maybe the players had high contrast sensitivity to begin with, instead of thinking immediately that their contrast sensitivity was improved. So they held an experiment, Bavelier asked two groups of non-action video game players to do 50 hours of gaming. One grouped played the well known FPS, Call of Duty, and the other played a game that “offered a rich visual experience, but one bereft of action.”.

“We found that the people in the first group improved by 43 percent, and the other group not at all,” she said.

So there you have it, playing FPS games can actually help your eyesight in the long run. So when someone bothers you saying “you’re gonna mess your eyes up playing that shooting game so much!”, you can be a smartass and share your knowledge with them, heh.

Kotaku has a preview of Punch-Out!! which the personally played. I know they said it’s a remake, but I was expecting a bit more I think. From what I see, it’s not tailored for the hard-core gamers, and it’s just going to be one of those games you play for a couple of minutes for some fun. It’s starting to look more like a minigame more than anything in depth. I’d never waste more then $20 on this game.

I laugh at how they said Punch-Out!! is going to feature a “superb” dodge and weave system. I guess the “slick” motion controls are a plus, and the option to use the classic controller is cool, but it’s nothing special I think. It was something special in the old days, maybe this game will actually turn out good, time will tell. The game wasn’t going for something extremely indepth and realistic, obviously, but from the looks of it, it’s just a fun minigame. I’ll stick to Fight-Night Round 3, and hold out until Fight Night Round 4 comes out. Also, I’ll be playing that prize fighter game.

The Fable 2 DLC is coming soon from Lionhead Studios, and will be coming in a few weeks says Peter Molyneux.

“The next DLC comes out in the spring,” Molyneux said. “We’re in the spring now so don’t think months, think more like weeks. It’s called See the Future.”

The DLC will be more story driven this time around, says Peter Molyneux. That sounds pretty good I think. I liked both the original and sequel Fable stories, and I’m sure the DLC won’t disappoint.

“The first (DLC) was done very close to Fable II and the team was tired and we sort of pushed ourselves to get something out early for the fans,” he said. “This time we’ve taken a little bit more time on it, it’s a little bit more story driven. It answers some of the questions, if you’re a real fan of Fable, it answers some of those questions. It’s going to test you a little bit emotionally as well. But I think the real unique thing here is it starts to tease and hint at what it starting to happen in the world of Albion and what is happening in the future.”

Also, he hinted towards the existence of Fable III!

“If we were to take the franchise even further, going on from Fable II, I’m not announcing anything, but if you play See the Future you’re going to be getting a flavor at what’s going to be happening,” he said. “My ideal is what I would want to happen is something big.”

This gadget has the potential to change the gaming industry, majorly. Using this, you may never have to upgrade your computer again (and us PC gamers know how technology makes a jump every year or so). If OnLive works as well as it is said to, you’ll be able to play a game as intesive as Crysis, at it’s maximum settings, for the price less then that of a Wii.

OnLive is a new video games on demand service, founded by Rearden Studios. This technology changes the way you get and handle computer games. Take Crysis for example, instead of buying a $3000 high-end computer, use your normal computer and let OnLive’s servers handle all the processing power. The only extra that you’ll need to purchase is a “Micro-console” and have a broadband internet connection.

Kotaku explains the concept like this: ” The controller input….it’s going from your hand to the controller through the internet to OnLive’s machines then back again as streamed video.”. Which pretty much means that their servers are handling everything, which raises the big question. Will there be any lag? OnLive can show video up to a resolution of 720p at 60 frames per second, depending on your internet connection. For standard definition television quality, a broadband connection of at least 1.5 megabits per second is required. For HDTV resolution, a connection of at least 5 mbps is needed.

OnLive claims to deliver video feeds that will have a ping less than that of one millisecond, with also extremely fast video compression. There are no install times, it’s cross-platform capable and the ability to rent and try games. There is also the ability to record short 15 second clips of gameplay called “Brag Clips”.They’re also already receieving purchase offers from big companies like EA, THQ, Codemasters, Ubisoft, Atari, Warner Bros., Take-Two, and Epic Games. This console is expected to be priced “competitively” and possibly have a monthly fee comparable to Xbox Live’s prices.

OnLive has been running small controlled tests with Crysis, and the game played well on the max settings with no lag. So it’s promising at the moment, but we’ll see how it does under pressure when it goes to external, large scale, beta testing.Server clusters will be located in Santa Clara, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere, in hopes of offering OnLive customers within 1000 miles a lag free experience.

Still can’t play your Crysis on Full settings? Or even medium settings? Well, you’re about to be blown away because Crytec has announced their new game engine already.

So this new engine, successor to the CryENGINE 2 is going to be called CryENGINE 3 (how creative!). It is claimed to be readily compatible for current generation hardware (such as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360), but it is also capable of use on the next generation, using “scalable computation and graphics for all major upcoming platforms”.

I’m personally excited, CryENGINE 2 leaves me speechless, it’s graphics are almost photo realistic. CryENGINE 3 will probably be even more amazing, though it will take a monster of a computer to play it, or even a workstation -_-‘.